One of the first words a preschooler often recognizes is his name. This is why we do a lot of name recognition activities in our classroom! Each year we create an easy homemade name puzzle that we use during small groups. At the end of the school year, these can be taken home. They would be a great addition to summer enrichment activities.
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Easy Homemade Name Puzzle
We have small groups at the very end of our preschool day. We break 16 children into 4 small groups. During that time we have 3 teachers available, so each teacher takes a group. The fourth group independently works on puzzles or other manipulatives. Small groups is short, around 10 minutes, but allows us time to get to know the children and their skills on a more personal level
What you will need for this literacy activity:
- Some sort of card stock (thick paper)
- Marker to write the names
Assembling this activity:
- Write the child’s name on 2 pieces of card stock.
- Leave one whole, and cut the other one between each letter.
The activity:
Place the whole strip and the pieces of strip at the table and invite the preschoolers to put the separate pieces together to make their names.
While many of our preschoolers by this point knew most of the letters in their names, it was more of a challenge to put them in proper order.
Using the whole strip as a guide, they were able to put their names together.
Once they master this, the next step would be to try putting the letters together without being able to refer to the whole name strip.
A great way to learn the order of letters in their names!
More literacy activities:
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I find the name puzzle to be helpful! I will definately do it with my new students! I hope it will work! Sooo helpful
Let me know how it goes!